Evangelicals leader seeks to make politics secondary

The Associated Press

Published Friday, November 23, 2007

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. -- When a presidential campaign contacted the Rev. Leith Anderson to ask for a meeting recently, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals said he had a bigger priority that day.

"I had a wedding or a funeral, I can't remember which," Anderson said, sitting in his book-lined office at the suburban Minneapolis megachurch he's led for 31 years. "Anyway, I don't pre-empt a wedding or a funeral for a presidential candidate. Because I'm a pastor."

Indeed, Anderson still leads seven services a weekend at Wooddale Church. But the story of the spurned candidate, whom he declined to name, offers some insight into his vision for the NAE an organization that represents 45,000 churches and 30 million members.

"My life is not in Washington," Anderson said. "I am not a politician. What evangelists are about is primarily faith, and not politics."

Anderson, who moved from interim president to president of the NAE in October, brings both his biblical focus and a wide-ranging set of concerns about the environment and human rights to the leadership of the NAE at an unsettled time.

His predecessor, Ted Haggard, resigned last year.

Meanwhile, evangelicals have been finding it difficult to settle on a Republican presidential candidate who is seen as viable and opposes both abortion and same-sex marriage.

Anderson, 63, is among a group of evangelical leaders who are "just as orthodox in their theology" as leading conservative Christians but think that relating faith to culture is more complex than just a couple of issues, said George Brushaber, president of the evangelical Bethel College near St. Paul.

"He wants the church to be part of the conversation in the public square, and not be owned by any narrow base," said Brushaber, who has known Anderson for several decades.

The NAE has never had aims as explicitly political as other evangelical groups like the Christian Coalition. But it does have a presence on Capitol Hill and tries to set an agenda for the broader evangelical movement, issuing "Statements of Conscience" to guide the community activism of evangelical congregations around the country.

Prominent evangelical leaders like Pat Robertson and James Dobson became known for their dedication to passing laws cracking down on legalized abortion and same-sex marriage. By contrast, climate change is the policy issue most closely associated with Anderson.